Hopeful & Del Mar Futurity don’t make Kentucky Derby winners

Taken on their own merit, the Hopeful Stakes at Saratoga and the Del Mar Futurity in California are worthy Grade 1, seven-furlong tests that will measure some of the country’s top 2-year-olds.

As bellwethers for the 1 1/4-mile Kentucky Derby, well, that is a whole different matter. That is something to be borne in mind for would-be futures players as Booked in the east and Hughes in the west are morning-line favorites to win Sunday in the biggest juvenile races of the summer.

Fair odds: Hopeful Stakes 2026 at Saratoga.

There was a time when the Hopeful was a breeding ground for future Triple Crown champions Omaha, Whirlaway, Secretariat and Affirmed. It produced 18 Derby winners in its first 75 years. But in the 49 years since Affirmed, only Swale and I’ll Have Another won the Kentucky Derby after starting the Hopeful.

The drought at Del Mar is not as long, what with Silver Charm, American Pharoah and Nyquist pulling off the Futurity-Derby double within the last three decades. Aside from that trio, California Chrome was the only Futurity starter in the last 43 years to wear roses the following May in Kentucky.

It looks even more stark examining the 21st century. Starters since 2000 in the Hopeful are 21: 1-1-1 in the Derby with I’ll Have Another being the lone winner in 2012 and only one other, Just Steel, getting to the Churchill Downs gate since 2019.

Del Mar Futurity horses are 21: 3-0-0 in this century’s Derbies with California Chrome, American Pharoah and Nyquist being the winners come May. Since COVID, Citizen Bull and Litmus Test were the only two horses to start both races, and neither got close to the money in the Derby.

Bruno De Julio, a longtime workout analyst, handicapper and horse owner who curates Bruno With the Works, said 2-year-olds are forced to peak early, usually too early, during the Saratoga summer.

“Owners are the reason why horses fail, because they put pressure on trainers to run them before they’re ready to run,” De Julio said. “These owners don’t understand that these horses are not their stocks. They’re living, breathing animals that need to mature as 2-year-olds.”

Evidence of that is seen in last eight Hopeful winners, none of whom made it to the Kentucky Derby starting gate. They include Ted Noffey, the 2025 champion juvenile male who went 4-for-4 last year before being sidelined with bone bruising. Owned by Spendthrift Farm and trained by Todd Pletcher, the Into Mischief colt only now is close to a return.

“Saratoga is very much where you have to squeeze on your horses to get them to break their maiden early and have enough time to be able to go in the Hopeful,” De Julio said. “It’s a culture. At Saratoga a lot of guys want to shove these big-time horses out there and try to take the seven weeks to get them ready. All you’re doing really is getting those horses to go backwards.”

De Julio for years has asked a telling trivia question. Who was the last Derby winner who had a maiden-breaking win on the main track at Saratoga? It was Winning Colors, the filly who made her triumphant debut 39 years ago. Go back to Decidedly to find the last male who broke his maiden on the Saratoga dirt and then won the Derby. That was going on 65 years ago.

“All these guys are shoving these 2-year-olds to break their maidens at Saratoga thinking, ‘I’ve got a Derby contender,’ ” De Julio said. “The funniest thing is that people think everything starts and ends at Saratoga. It’s absolutely not true.”

The situation looks a little different on the West Coast, even though the last six Del Mar Futurity victors have been absent from the Kentucky Derby. Bob Baffert has trained a record 19 winners in the California race, but only five made it to Churchill Downs. Game Winner, who went on to finish fourth in the 2021 Derby, was the most recent.

“It takes a different kind of horse to win at seven furlongs as a September 2-year-old than a May 3-year-old going 1 1/4 miles,” said longtime West Coast handicapper and horse owner Jon Lindo, who hosts the Thoroughbred L.A. weekend radio show. “Early brilliance is rewarded in the Del Mar Futurity, especially as the 2-year-old horse population has declined in Southern California.”

Baffert trained four of the last five Del Mar Futurity horses who went on to start in the Derby since 2019. His history-making champion American Pharoah was the last Derby winner who had broken his maiden at Del Mar, but that happened when the 2014 Futurity was run on a synthetic main track. Real Quiet, also from Baffert’s barn, was the last Derby winner who was a first-time victor on Del Mar dirt, and that was 30 years ago.

Lindo and De Julio said the push to display Derby acumen is not urgent during the Del Mar summer.

“The route horses don’t really show up until the fall in Southern California at the earliest,” Lindo said. “This (Del Mar) surface is tough on 2-year-olds. My trainer backed off the babies. Many got sore behind.”

“At Del Mar it seems the horses come in and get ready to run in big races much more easily and more frequently,” De Julio said. “It’s not just squeezed into the summer.”

The relevance of all this comes into focus for horseplayers when the Kentucky Derby 2027 futures market opens this fall. Ted Noffey, for example, closed as the 10-1 individual favorite in the October 2025 pool of Churchill Downs’ pari-mutuel Kentucky Derby Future Wager. Brant, who won the Del Mar Futurity for Baffert and owner Amr Zedan, was next at 14-1. Neither started the Derby.

At least for now, the days when the Hopeful and Del Mar Futurity were proving grounds for Kentucky Derby winners are becoming a more distant memory with each passing year.

“Having been in California through the golden age, where we got to see Silver Charm and Real Quiet and all the big horses in the late ’90s and early 2000s,” De Julio said, “the (Del Mar Futurity) has dropped off quite considerably as far as being a benchmark for the Triple Crown.”